In the heart of the Bohinj Valley, in the alpine village of Stara Fužina, a long-forgotten well has been brought back into the life of the community. Not as a source of water, but as a source of memory.
Project Name: Well of Memory
Studio Name: OFIS ARCHITECTS
Location: Stara Fužina, Slovenia
Status: Completion 2025
Site area: 250 m2
Build area: 6 m2
Project team: Rok Oman, Špela Videčnik, Andrej Gregoric, Janez Martinčič, Rok Dolinšek, Amadej Mravlak, Marieke Van Dorpe
Unearthed during routine roadworks, the seven-meter-deep, stone-lined shaft had lain hidden for more than five centuries — so long that no villager could recall its existence. What once sustained life had itself slipped from living memory.
The Well as Public Space
Historically, village wells were more than infrastructure. They were focal points of community — places of exchange, storytelling, and ritual. To revive the well’s role today means not to reconstruct the past literally, but to reinterpret it for the present. The project transforms the rediscovered shaft into a symbolic public space, where gathering is no longer about water, but about reflection, culture, and continuity.
Form and Gesture
The new intervention is deliberately minimal, almost meditative. A thin black circular surface hovers above the opening, like a contemporary echo of “vedro” – the bucket once lowered to draw water. Its reflective surface captures the changing alpine sky, the fog of the valley, the fleeting shifts of light. From its center descends a slender glowing rod, extending into the original stone shaft, evoking both the rhythm of falling drops and the depth of passing time. The installation does not dominate. It invites. It frames the void as an active presence – a space of pause and memory at the scale of the village.
Local Meaning, Local Making
The well’s return to life is as much a social act as it is an architectural one. The project was initiated not by institutions, but by village community – farmers and residents who decided to commission, build, and maintain it as part of their shared heritage. In collaboration with a local artist, they embedded cow hoof-prints into the new paving around the well – a playful nod to the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Here, however, the stars are not actors, but the cows that shape the landscape and pass daily through the village. Humor and affection intertwine with tradition, anchoring the project in the everyday.
A Contemporary Ritual
The Well of Memory demonstrates that public space need not be monumental to be meaningful. With a small, precise gesture, it reactivates a forgotten depth as a place of collective imagination. It is at once an object and an event, carrying the weight of history, the lightness of abstraction, and the warmth of a community that values its own stories.
